Top 10 New Changes in Chicago’s 18th Ed.

Call me a big ol’ nerd, but I get a thrill when one of my go-to reference works gets an update. I’ve written before about my love for reference books; they’re a lens through which we view the world, and these revisions help us keep on top of the changes in a constantly changing world.

The Chicago Manual of Style, the primary stylebook used at ProofreadingPal, has just released a new edition, eighteenth in its 118-year history, which updates, clarifies, or revises many of its long-standing recommendations. Here are ten of the biggest changes.

Citations of Books no Longer Require a Place of Publication (14.30)

This applies to all books published after 1900, with rare exceptions if there is something notable about the content or circumstances of publication of the edition published in a particular place.

When Using Two or more Proper Nouns in an Adjectival Phrase, Separate Them with an En Dash Rather Than a Hyphen (6.85)

This has all kinds of practical applications when talking about relationships among people or entities, be they collaborative, competitive, or adversarial. US–China relations, the Red Sox–Yankees rivalry, comet Hale–Bopp, the Kennedy–Nuzzi affair: these all take the en dash. Observe due diligence, however, to be sure you’re not referring to a single person with a hyphenated surname (e.g., “The García-López design for Wonder Woman’s costume has become iconic” uses a hyphen, as said costume was designed by a single artist, José Luis García-López.)

In Title Case, Prepositions with Five Letters or More Are Now Capitalized (8.160)

Title case, the mix of upper- and lower-cased words used in newspaper headlines, and rendering such titles of books, movies, and so forth in body text can be tricky even for experienced writers. Nouns, pronouns and verbs are always capitalized, whereas articles (a, an the) and conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or) are not, unless they fall at the beginning of the title.

Prepositions, though, have always been an area of uncertainty. Since its 12th edition, the CMoS has advised writers to use lowercase for all prepositions, “regardless of length,” but this gives us odd, unsatisfying results when applied to such works as Raymond Carver’s short-story collection What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, or Agatha Christie’s 1941 novel Evil under the Sun. The new rule would capitalize “About” and “Under” in these cases.

Preference to Capitalize the First Word of a Complete Sentence After a Colon (6.67)

Many have wondered whether Chicago would adopt this rule: It did.

More Accommodation for the Singular “They” (5.51, 5.52, 5.266)

The CMoS now officially endorses “they” (rather than “he or she”) as a pronoun for a hypothetical person of unknown gender and “themself” as a reflexive pronoun in such cases (e.g., “Any patron of the buffet should feel free to help themself to whatever appeals to them.”).

Unhyphenated Compounds Remain Unhyphenated When Used Descriptively (7.91)

Multiword nouns without a hyphen, what the CMoS calls “open compounds,” previously had a hyphen added when employed as adjectival phrases, but no more. So someone who writes science fiction is now “a science fiction writer,” and no longer “a science-fiction writer.”

New Guidance on Avoiding Bias in Language

The new edition devotes sections 5.255–5.267 to revised and updated strategies for addressing identity, ability, and gender. Perhaps the longest awaited development, though, comes in 8.39, where the CMoS, more than four years after The AP Stylebook made the change, unambiguously recommends capitalizing “Black” in reference to people or culture, while leaving capitalization of “white” to author preference.

Include the Initial “The” in the Names of Periodicals (8.172)

Chicago has had a longstanding practice, now ingrained in many proofreaders as muscle memory, of treating the initial definite article not as part of a newspaper or magazine’s proper name but as part of the surrounding text, e.g., “an article in the Wall Street Journal says circulation of the New Yorker has declined.” The new rule mandates that the article should be treated as part of the title (i.e., italicized and capitalized) when the title is given in full, if that’s how it appears in the publication’s own branding.

This is trickier than you might think. For instance, you may refer to “The Wall Street Journal” on first reference, but simply “the Journal” in subsequent mentions. Some newspapers do not have a definite article in their official names; neither the Chicago Sun-Times nor the Chicago Tribune has one, though most everybody adds one. And some papers omit the city of publication from their official names, so you may speak of “Cleveland’s newspaper The Plain Dealer” or “the Cleveland Plain Dealer” but never “The Cleveland Plain Dealer.”

Guidance for Indigenous languages and sources (11.49–11.52)

Chapter 11 of the CMoS offers advice for interpolating non-English vocabulary into English-language academic writing. The new edition expands this coverage to Indigenous languages and knowledge sources in new and exciting ways, giving guidance not only on spelling and typography for Indigenous writing systems like Diné Bizaad, but advice for citing Indigenous knowledge, much of which is preserved in collective oral tradition rather than in definitive texts.

This has profound implications. The publishing industry’s failure to provide citation strategies for knowledge sources outside the European academic tradition has served (intentionally or not) to propagate the idea that such knowledge is inferior, not worth citing or knowing—an idea which has had horrific consequences in the real world.

Guidelines for Citing AI-Generated Content (14.112)

As depressing as it is, this was probably inevitable. The technology industry continues to promote AI for all kinds of writing, no matter how ill-suited it is to the task; and if we can’t prevent people from using the stuff, we can at least make sure that no one mistakes it for content written by a human being.

It’s another reason ProofreadingPal is here to help. AI editors are free, but we offer free samples too! Check out a free ProofreadingPal sample and see if you can see a difference.

Jack F.